On January 29, the Briefing on Hainan International Tourism Island sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Hainan Province was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is the first official promotional briefing of Hainan held in Cambodia. It witnessed the gathering of 150 friends from China and Cambodia and their in-depth exchanges on adding cross-border flights and strengthening bilateral tourism, cultural, and trade cooperation.

On the briefing, the Department thoroughly introduced new tourism formats, products and tourism resources of Hainan in video, PPT, and other forms. In this process, attendees could enjoy Hainan songs, Khmer songs, and other artistic performance fully showing the charm of culture-tourism integration between Hainan and Cambodia. In addition, a Cambodian tourism expert was invited by the sponsor to share his story and feeling about Hainan with a prepared VCR, and received won warm response from the guests present.

Currently, there are four air routes between Hainan and Cambodia, including direct routes between Sanya and Phnom Penh and between Sanya and Siem Reap. On this briefing, representatives of both parties agreed that the cooperation between Hainan and Cambodia would have broad prospects and great potential. In the future, with additional air flights between Hainan and Cambodia provided, Hainan may develop more tourism products suitable for Cambodian tourists and increase the occupancy rate of the flights to encourage more Cambodian tourists to visit Hainan.

According to Zhou Anwei, chief planner of the Department, since the founding of Hainan Free Trade Zone, the central government has issued many favorable policies to promote the development of tourism and sports in Hainan, in a bid to make it a national sports tourism demonstration zone and an international tourism consumption center. In the future, Hainan will open its market wider to international tourists, and improve the tourism opening-up policies in hope of attracting more Cambodian enterprises to Hainan for cooperation and common development.

According to H.E. So Visothy, Under Secretary of State, Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism (MOT), about 1.9 million Chinese tourists visited Cambodia in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 72.6%. This briefing will make Cambodians have a deeper understanding of Hainan. The MOT will visit Hainan from March to April 2019 to enhance this exchange.

Source: The Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Hainan Province